Review Summary: Tomorrow We Die Alive is trying too hard.
Back in 2007, Born of Osiris have released their debut EP called The New Reign. When I heard it, I was pretty quick to dismiss the band because this record wasn't bringing anything new to the table of deathcore. Two years later, they are releasing a very solid debut album A Higher Place, which was way more tech-death influenced than a The New Reign, and had much more melody in the sound on both guitar and keyboard side. When The Discovery was released, I was disappointed, because chugging was back and keyboards weren't exactly strengthening the overall sound, however, the lead guitars were very nice, and production was better than before. I was stoked for their next release after hearing the preview of it, but when it came out...
The album starts off with the song Machine, in which first 30 seconds consist of short orchestral piece, backed up by martial industrial drumming, which are slowly blurring into harmonized guitar. Sounds good, right? But mere seconds after the "epic" atmosphere is crushed by 4 minutes of non-stopping chugging and somewhat Discovery-style sweep-solo.
The second track - Divergency - follows the same formula, albeit with excluding the orchestral intro which is replaced with "sci-fi" keyboards throughout the whole song.
Mindful, Exhilarate and Absolution are the most balanced songs on the album (but that fact does not make them better), combining the new elements such as more prominent electronics, chugging, catchy chorus with some clean vocals and occasional riffing.
The Origin and Aeon III are pretty much the same things as the three songs above, however, excluding the clean vocals and adding even more electronica.
Imaginary Condition is the only song on the album that sort of pulls off the "epicness" the band tried to have on the whole album, due to keyboards sounding like soundtrack from Disney movie, but the rest of the song still sound pretty generic with forced breakdowns.
Illusionist can easily be placed somewhere around The Origin, since two are indistinguishable.
Last two songs - Source Field and Vengeance - are perfectly closing the album, having the best guitar work, nicely done orchestration and variable drums.
Overall, Tomorrow We Die Alive seems to be trying too hard to be epic, while lacking the muscle to sound at least good. And even if you liked one or two songs from the album and you liked them, I'm pretty sure that after ten same songs, it will get dull very fast on you. It's a shame though, since Born of Osiris were able to sound very solid even before The Discovery, but they seem to lost their touch, resulting in an album which tops a lot of bands, but still falls short compared to their own releases.
